Nothing
by dances.under.the.moon
Summary: In a matter of minutes, his world is turned upside-down. Mildly angsty in the first half. One-shot. Rated T for the sake of safety. :


_A/N: Hi! I'm a new member of the site, and I have to say I love all of the work here! However, I'm not new to Dragon Age, and I love it to bits. This is the first piece of fan fiction I've written for the game (and for the site), so please R&R and be nice and harsh! Well, not terribly harsh. xD_

_Enjoy!_

_{:note: The title of the story actually is "Nothing"...it's not just nothing. Just wanted to clear that up. (: }_

* * *

No.

_No._

I've got to move. Lyra's jogging casually up to her death, like all she's doing is going to _buy a bloody loaf of bread_, and I've got to stop her. She is not going to be the one to do this. I run faster than I ever have before, but it's not nearly fast enough. My legs weigh two tons each; it feels like I'm running through molasses. Wynne can stop this. She has to. She can make a force field, or slow her down or something. _Something. _I need time. I need get to the Archdemon before her. I'm not just going to let Lyra sacrifice herself.

"Lyra! No! For the love of the Maker, _no!_" I scream, not able to hear my own voice over the din, but it isn't enough. By the Maker, she _ignores_ me.

My stomach does a backflip as she calmy but deliberately plunges the greatsword into the Archdemon's boulder of head. It gives a screech that's some hellish cross between rage, hatred, and a bit of relief, a sound that probably seems like icing on the whole bloody happy cake for all the happy soldiers below. A ring of light shoots out from its head, swallowing up everyone, including _her_. I can't move, I can't see, I can't feel. Everything's white and gold and black and gray, all at the same time. There's too much color yet there's none. Maker, what in Andraste's name _is_ this thing?

The terrible light dissolves, and I need to do something. But I can't. I can't move. I'm frozen there by whatever..._force_ caused this whole damn Blight in the first place. I'm helpless. _You stupid, stupid fool,_ I think angrily. _It's your pride that's responsible for this._ Honestly, having sex with Morrigan...it can't have been so bad if it prevented this, right? Why didn't I just kill the Maker-forsaken archdemon myself?

I put too much faith in Riordan.

_Always have a Plan B, Alistair_, Eamon would tell me, over and over again.

Funny thing, that. By now, I've probably gone through half the alphabet and this still sucks.

There's a moment of silence, of complete and utter silence, and the world...it just stops. The elf standing on the dragon's head turns, slowly, to face me, and our eyes meet. By the Maker, she's...well..._magnificent_ is the only word I can think of to even begin to describe what she looks like. Her short, dark hair whips around her face in the impossible breeze. Her eyes are a wonderfully terrible gold color, and on her face, an expression of tranquility, of peace. She just...doesn't deserve this end. She deserves to live on as the Hero of Ferelden, to bask in the limelight. She's too good for this. This altar boy was never meant to do great things; I at least owe it to her to make what she's done _count,_ make her life so much better like she did for me.

'Goodbye', she says silently, before giving a pained sigh and crumpling to the ground. I run forward, and I think my heart has just dropped out of my chest, because there's emptiness where it used to be. The terrible, Maker-forsaken silence is bloody _unnerving_. I want...I just want to scream. Like in the Chantry, when I was thirteen and the worst thing I had to worry about was an unhappy Revered Mother and boredom. At last, it's broken by hundreds of thousands men and women, human, elf, and dwarf alike, erupting with the sound of victory and ecstasy down below. No. No, no, no, no. She's not gone. She can't be.

"Alistair," Wynne mutters, her voice hollow and broken. I've forgotten she's standing there. "I'm sorry. But there's nothing you can--"

I don't turn around to face the mage. I don't want to _look_ at anybody but Lyra ever again. If I look away...she'll be gone. And I can't let that happen. "Yes," I choke. "There was. I could have...killed it myself. I could have...done...something. But..."

Wynne walks up to me and pats my back. "Don't touch me," I hiss at her. It's a cruel thing to do, and I know that she feels just as hurt as I do, but I can't help it. Without comment, the old mage steps back. The cheers below are a cruel reminder that whatever in Andraste's name has just happened, it's real. It's not a nightmare. I'm not going to wake up from this and have Lyra tell me everything is alright.

Because it's not. Everything is certainly not alright. Nobody else could respond to my stupid jokes with one of their own like she did; nobody ever will. It feels like somebody's taken a spoon to my insides, leaving nothing but a...hole. An empty hole. And I know I'm being selfish, because I'm not the only one who lost the best thing to happen to my life. All of Ferelden...hell, the whole of Thedas has just lost the best hero that ever lived. Desperately, I put two fingers under her jaw, where her heartbeat would be.

Nothing.

They say that when you love somebody, truly love them, they become a part of you, and you them. When they leave, as does a part of you. Somehow, I'd never believed that, but now I understand. There's nothing I can do. Nothing. She's gone.

Zevran doesn't say a word. He looks just as hurt as I am, sage green eyes staring vaguely into the distance, and that should make me angry. I mean, what right does he have to feel the same way about her? Any other day, I suppose I'd be angry. Right now...I'm spent. There's just nothing left to _make_ angry anymore. I'm not quite sure what I am anymore.

I'm a Grey Warden, except now that she's gone, it means nothing. I'm the son of a king, but since Anora's going to rule anyway, it means nothing. I'm almost a templar, I'm twenty-one years old, I'm blonde and I'm tall and...that doesn't seem to mean much anymore.

We were going to have a life together; she told me as much after the Landsmeet. We were going to grow old together...well, alright. We were going to get middle-aged together. But now...it means nothing.

Nothing.

* * *

FIVE YEARS LATER

_His footsteps echo in the massive hall. Nobody else is here, thankfully. This enormous temple isn't where they'd buried her at first; her funeral had been held at Ostagar. He looks up, and has to crane his neck to see the full height of the massive statue before him._

_He chuckles to himself. It hardly does her justice. Her nose is all wrong: it wasn't so pointed, so small. And her eyebrows, they weren't so low, so stern and solemn. But the sculptor has done a good job, as it still looks like her. Thankfully, they'd given her the Warden Commander armor that she loved and looked great in. At her enormous sandstone feet, a copper plaque says, in bold but simple script:_

-

_**SER LYRA MAHARIEL**_

_CHAMPION OF REDCLIFFE, HONORARY MEMBER OF THE DWARVEN ASSEMBLY, HERO OF FERELDEN_

_-_

_He smiles. Ser Lyra Mahariel, Hero of Ferelden. He wasn't aware that she'd been knighted after her death, and it's likely not what she would have wanted. But it feels right._

_He walks further up the path, past her statue, where a patch of grass lay. The only headstone is her trademark set of armor, held in shape by magic. He's surprised that nobody has stolen it yet; he reaches out and touches the armor, and is zapped by an invisible force. Well, that makes sense. They wouldn't just leave it there, unguarded._

_Alistair kneels down, and his heartbeat speeds up. Still, under six feet of grass and dirt, this woman makes him crazy. He gives a bitter laugh, then sighs. He's not quite sure how to do this. Should he talk to her? Strike up some kind of one-sided conversation? Then he would feel like a bit of a madman, but he's long since given up his sanity. He clears his throat._

_"Well. Hello," he says, unsure. "This is, uh, Alistair here. You remember me, right? We were Grey Wardens together. In fact, we were the _last_ Grey Wardens." He pauses. "I suppose I should apologize. For not visiting you more often. I thought about you, you know. Still do. I just...couldn't...I don't know. I'm sorry._

_"The Grey Wardens have started up again. They're doing very well. Also, the Dalish have been given their lands back, where the Dales were. I...just figured you'd want to know. And you've been knighted. Weird, right? I didn't know either._

_"Wynne has become First Enchanter at the Circle. Zevran's president of the Crows, and Leliana started looking for the Urn again, though rumor has it they haven't found anything._

___"Kahn is now the head of a very large family of Mabari, and has sired some incredibly adorable puppies. Sten went back to his people, and I haven't heard from him since. Oghren and Shale went back to Orzammar together, but as far as I know, they split apart after that." Alistair sighs._

_"Lyra...I love you. I always will. Wherever you are...I want you to know that. May the Maker watch over you." And with that, he leans forward and kisses the patch of grass, and gets up. He's not sure what, but something has changed in him. He hasn't even spent ten minutes here, but he feels a sense of...closure? No, not really. For as long as he lives, he'll feel the pain he felt on that last night, when the Blight was ended. But he's been put...at ease, he supposes._

_They're both at peace, now. He stays here for a while, in the tomb of his beloved, and takes in the warm, soft sunlight that trickles in from the stained glass windows._

_Suddenly, a soft breeze blows, and brings with it Lyra's achingly familiar aroma: a combination of the lemon-scented armor polish Leliana had given her, the musky scent of Kahn (who had never been far behind), and the smell of the leaves and the trees and the forest. It sounds like her soft voice on the wind, but he can't quite make out what the voice says. Then, the breeze gets stronger for a fraction of a second, and drops something in his hand._

_It's a rose, untouched by time save for some curling around the edges of the petals. It's a deep, blood red, and brings Alistair back five and a half years, to camp, where he'd given this same rose to Lyra. He's not sure what to feel: happiness, or sorrow? As he rubs the smooth petals gently, he definitely feels something like gratitude._

_And then, he turns back to the patch of grass and truly smiles for the first time in five years._

_"Thank you," he whispers. "For everything."_


End file.
